A color photograph which has widely been popularized at present has progressed to the extent that it can be obtained more quickly and easily in any place by progress of a light-sensitive material itself and a development processing technique. In particular, in a color print field, a centralized processing system at a production point called a color laboratory, where a high speed printer for a large volume production and a large-scale processing equipment are installed, and a development in a dispersed processing system using a small sized printer processor called "mini labo" installed in a store allow a production according to various purposes can be carried out.
In recent years, commercialization of a light-sensitive material using a high silver chloride emulsion and the processing process therefore, has greatly advanced rapidity in processing. Researches on raising the performances of such the high silver chloride emulsion having an excellent rapid processing have been energetically carried out. It has so far been known that the high silver chloride emulsion is liable to have a defect that it is difficult to provide a high sensitivity or liable to fog.
Meanwhile, it is known that a silver halide fine crystal grain contained in the high silver chloride emulsion is usually easy to form cube or tetradecahedron which is rich in a (100) plane, and almost all of the emulsions used in the techniques described above contain cubic grains.
To the contrary, recently a technique for carrying out a grain formation under presence of a specific compound to form the grains in which 50% or more of an outer surface consists of a (111) plane is disclosed in, for example, JP-A-4-283742 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an unexamined published Japanese patent application), and it is reported that such grains have a high sensitivity and a low fog.
According to the procedure disclosed above, an emulsion comprising high silver chloride grains in which 50% or more of an outer surface consists of the (111) plane has been prepared and a color photographic paper has been produced using the emulsion in order to obtain a high silver chloride emulsion having a high sensitivity and a low fog. The color photographic paper thus obtained, however, have generated various problems in a practical application. That is, it has been found that while such an emulsion provides a high sensitivity, it has so-called latent image fading that a developed density is lowered by aging after exposing and before processing.
In the production of a color print using the color photographic paper, a stabilization in quality of a print obtained as well as rapid processability has always been required to improve a productive efficiency. Accordingly, the latent image fading in a printing process makes it difficult to keep a print quality constant. Considering the actual condition of a market which has already been described, this problem on a performance stability will become a serious defect.
In other words, the provision of a high sensitivity and the stabilization of a latent image are very important subjects in providing a light-sensitive material with which a print having a high quality can be produced in a high efficiency, and the development of a technique which can achieve them at the same time has been desired.